His Workout: Beating People Up

Lee Child’s bodacious action hero, Jack Reacher, has already tramped through 17 novels and three e-book singles. But his latest, “Never Go Back,” may be the best desert island reading in the series. It’s exceptionally well plotted. And full of wild surprises. And wise about Reacher’s peculiar nature. And positively Bunyanesque in its admiring contributions to Reacher lore.

We knew this guy was big, smart and tough, but “Never Go Back” offers this description: “an extreme mesomorph physique, with a six-pack like a cobbled city street, and a chest like a suit of N.F.L. armor, and biceps like basketballs, and subcutaneous fat like a Kleenex tissue.” Reacher achieves this look with zero gym time and a pie and cheeseburger diet. He does get exercise, but it comes from episodes that end with some version of “So I banged their heads against the side of their car.” This book’s most memorable martial arts display has Reacher keeping his promise to demolish two other guys with his hands behind his back. “I’d put a bag on my head if I had one,” he volunteers.

Reacher starts this particular fight with an impressive kickoff. Mr. Child begins “Never Go Back” with some swift kicks, too. For the last couple of Reacher adventures, the author has been teasing readers with the thought that some day Reacher might return to the northeastern Virginia headquarters of the elite military police unit he once ran. The reason for his return: the telephone voice of Maj. Susan Turner, the woman now in Reacher’s old job. Their flirtation began in “61 Hours,” when he was in South Dakota. But that was four books ago. And Reacher is a guy who has made detours a way of life.

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CreditSonny Figueroa/The New York Times

As the new book begins, he has gone back to his old office and quickly gotten himself incarcerated. First of all, he faces a homicide charge. Second, there’s a paternity suit. Third, Major Turner is not at her desk. And fourth, Reacher didn’t read the fine print when he left the military in 1997. His status became that of a reservist; now, he is ordered back into the Army.

Mr. Child’s earlier titles have included “Bad Luck and Trouble,” “The Hard Way” and “A Wanted Man.” So Jack Reacher is no stranger to sudden misfortune. But he remembers nothing about the man he supposedly killed or the woman whose child he supposedly fathered. He realizes pretty quickly that these are trumped-up charges. He also realizes that Major Turner is in trouble, and Mr. Child orchestrates a fine sequence that places the two of them in adjacent jail cells, though they still haven’t met. What he does with the sounds of cell doors closing, the prisoner’s problem of having no shoelaces and Reacher’s eagerness to get a look at this woman is terrifically ingenious — and the two haven’t even joined forces yet.

But then they escape together. This gives each of them ample opportunity to admire the other’s military acumen. Turner (as she is mostly called) is a kindred spirit to Reacher, and she gets him to think about what kind of man he is. When he opens up enough to describe his wanderlust and cite a primal urge for wild creatures to spread their DNA (the Vikings are mentioned), Turner isn’t surprised. She does tell him to shut up about that when he deals with the paternity suit awaiting him in California.

Mr. Child creates a breathless cross-country spree for his runaways. And, as usual, he treats a journey as a series of problems to be solved. But the problems are impressively daunting: how can Reacher and Turner get through West Virginia when they’re down to their last 80 cents and have no good means of transportation? Better read this book to find out why Reacher considers West Virginia one big A.T.M., and how he winds up exclaiming, “This is the life,” speeding through the night in a red Corvette convertible. This is a far cry from the Reacher who used to think his only possession, a folding toothbrush, was one possession too many.

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Lee ChildCreditSigrid Estrada

He, Turner and their two folding toothbrushes eventually make it to California. As they travel, their every move is tracked and discussed by two men code-named Romeo and Juliet, who are slightly silly throwbacks to Mr. Child’s earlier plotting style. Few thriller writers require MacGuffins — the secret whatever-it-is that a hero needs to find or thwart — as elaborate as those in Mr. Child’s books, and it’s hard for the author to dream up villains worth Reacher’s attention.

But the intrigue angle of “Never Go Back” is beautifully trumped by the paternity charge. Because here, suddenly, Reacher meets a child — a very tall child — who sounds and thinks just like him. This kid splits hairs. Likes diners. Delivers smart backtalk. And excels at deductive reasoning. She may or may not be Reacher’s daughter, but she’s got the brass to say, “Don’t play dumb, mister,” when Reacher tries doing that. Their meeting, superbly staged and completely unexpected, features some of the best, wiliest writing Mr. Child has ever done.

For Reacher-like sticklers, a few small points of “Never Go Back” can be nitpicked. This is one of the most human, least mechanistic books in the lineup, yet Reacher repeatedly insists that all thought processes are binary: it’s yes or no, left or right, no middle ground. His spatial geometry is brilliant: it will come in superhandy for anyone ever wanting to break the bones of a fellow airplane passenger in absolute secrecy. But his calculations of probability are less clever, especially for a guy who fondly remembers Journal of Recreational Mathematics as boyhood reading.

And does he really have to count the beats in a short message from Afghanistan that may explain what Romeo and Juliet have plotting? The message has 23 syllables. It’s just a message. It isn’t a haiku, the antique, 17-syllable Japanese forerunner of Twitter. But Reacher never meets a number he won’t crunch. So a communiqué about an American officer’s meeting with an Afghan tribal leader becomes this: “Not a haiku. Or, a little less than a haiku and a half.” That’s how Reacherese is spoken.